“So… do you have a website?” Maybe you were avoiding the impending question because the online scene still feels new and overwhelming. Maybe your website just doesn’t quite embody your team or your mission. Maybe the other demands of handling a small team seem more urgent on an everyday basis and you simply haven’t gotten around to it. Or maybe you even find yourself questioning why web development is important altogether.
With so many ways to have an online presence these days—social media, review sites, marketplaces, you name it—some organizations are choosing to opt out of a traditional website. A select few organizations have made it with large, website-less social media campaigns, but this approach can also leave your audience wanting.
Think of your website as your home stadium. Your organization is not confined to your site and branching out into other online arenas is encouraged. But here, you call the shots. It’s a dedicated space for your team to show your audience what you’re all about and bring them into your mission. If you’re still not convinced, check out this article from Zyro highlighting why web development is important—even in 2022.
If you’re like a lot of mission-driven organizations, you may have started small, as a few people rallied around your mission. As you continue to gain traction and bring more people into your mission, it can be tough to keep up with the demands of running a nonprofit or small business. Sometimes, despite the temptation to do it all yourself, outsourcing specialized projects can be the best way to keep the most important things front and center.
At Amenable, we love partnering with mission-driven people, and oftentimes that includes helping small businesses and nonprofits fine-tune their online presence. We think web development is important, and our goal is to be a trusted and experienced partner, so our clients can fully focus on living out their mission and build trust with their own audiences.
There’s no one-size-fits-all website template, so we start every project with a conversation—or, “Web Discovery” in Amenable lingo. It’s a time for you to share who you are as an organization and what you need from your new website. Some people choose to simply refine their online presence and some want to start entirely from scratch, so we’ll talk through your options and develop a game plan from there. We see web development as less of an end product and more of an interactive process, so this plan can stretch as we build a site to reflect your brand.
After this, it’s our turn for a little bit. We’ll take a deep dive into the research to learn everything there is to know about your industry—best practices, your competitors, current trends, the online landscape, and how you fit into that landscape. We’ll learn how your team’s goals and your industry intersect in your online presence.
We see web discovery and research as prerequisites. Ultimately, all of the websites that we build are driven by content that aligns with your brand. Together we’ll spend some time refining how your brand communicates and how you want to be perceived, specifically online, in the content development phase of your website. With that in mind, we’ll make this content accessible through functional design that builds trust with your audience through both simplicity and relevance.
At this point, it’s time for another conversation. We will reveal a completed website concept and revisit your web goals, wants, and needs that we collaborated on during the initial web discovery. After this meeting, we can make minor edits if needed, but we’ll avoid the tempting-but-vicious cycle of endless revision so we can focus on developing and launching your website.
The key to a powerful web presence is consistent messaging that can grow with you so we’ll put in the work up front to collaborate on a site you’re excited about, and, from there, it’s game time. Our designers and developers will code your website, build out features, and get to work reviewing and testing the functionality. It’s time to launch your site, throw some confetti, and also give your team hands-on training so you have the freedom and flexibility to update your site as needed.
Our process might be straightforward, but it’s one that can stretch and grow with your needs, just like the simple, adaptable websites that we build. Without a doubt, a strong and centralized online presence can be one of the simplest ways to build trust with your clients. And, as a team of people who are passionate about our own mission and brand, we want to help other mission-driven organizations see why web development is important—not only in general, but in order to live out their brand.
We’d love for you to see some of the web development projects we’ve been working on recently, so feel free to check out these case studies from our work with Northstar Contracting Services and LYYDIA. If you’re starting to see why web development is important for you, give us a shout and we’d love to talk with you about what it could do for your brand.
